Yesterday and today: tough, amazing, more good luck than bad. I’m in Boise, Idaho now … here’s what went down:
Yesterday morning I crawled out of Prairie City at the crack of dawn, and spent almost the whole morning in the Blue Mountains (two more 5200 foot passes, hell.) Then the country opened up — way up — around the little ranching outpost of Unity, Oregon into an expansive and harsh scrubland. I pushed on after only a brief stop at Unity’s only store (junk food, hunting supplies, strange lost boy in ripped up cowboy boots) and passed through the sloped rangeland which is at an altitude high enough that it must only be used in summer. This land was profoundly, completely deserted. El Dorado pass, another frustrating climb some 15 miles beyond Unity, had burned only a few months before and conformed well to my mental image of the slags of Mordor. Even the birds had abandoned it leaving only an eerie silence and the sound of the wind.
All of this emptiness extended beyond the land and birds — I’d seen very few cars all morning. There were several half-hour stretches without anyone passing me in either direction. At about two in the afternoon (mountain time — I crossed the timezone line after the ghost town of Ironside) I descended to Brogan, a townlet at the head of a long valley that sloped some 35 miles down toward “civilization”. Brogan, if you were wondering, is the site of the Annual International Cow Pie Throwing Championship. The scatalogical obstacle course that was the shoulder of US 26 in this area made it clear why this is the case.
As the valley broadened, the air thickened and I pushed even harder to beat the oncoming rain. The roadside cow pies faded and were replaced by … onions. I’d entered a huge onion producing region, and for the rest of the day and part of the next the air would have a pleasant twinge of raw fresh onion, and the shoulders of the roads would become more of an onion slalom than anything else. Huge trucks loaded with recently harvested onions rumbled by me at low speeds, occasionally spilling a few after going over a bump. The rain finally came, but by then I was only 5 miles out of town, so I shut my brain on and pounded on to Vale, a little western town huddling beneath a huge rock.
It was my biggest day of the trip — 101 miles, over 8 hours in the saddle, 5000+ feet of climbing, all in the middle of nowhere. In a way it was too much — not advisable — and I don’t think I’d plan such a day again. The reason I was able to get it done it was a) a reliable bicycle and b) mind games. Managing extreme amounts of exercise or exertion turns out to be all about desire, and the manipulation of desire. When uncomfortable, I long for the removal of the source of discomfort. When in a high desert under a threatening sky, I long for even the smallest ex-town. This longing is the basis for motivation, for climbing one more hill, for making it to the next named place. I manipulate hunger and thirst too — “you can have a gatorade at the top of the pass” — “you can eat a cliff bar in Ironside.”
I finally rolled into Vale, Oregon and quickly found a place to stay. It was a vast downstairs story of a basic main street hotel, a place usually reserved for large parties of hunters (there were six beds and a kennel room for bird dogs.) But the hotel manager gave me a good deal and there was a busy Mexican restaurant across the street. I entered, ordered a beer and a very large burrito. Some of the other diners wore huge cowboy hats, or caps bearing the emblems of seed companies. The local lions club showed up in their yellow vests — a troop of hooting senior citizens. Their headquarters seemed to be attached to the back of this Mexican place and after many greetings and a few dirty jokes to their friends at the bar they disappeared into their sanctum for a meeting. Families and ranch couples packed the dining room. The place had a buzz of human warmth about it. I’ll always think of Vale as the sort of place where people huddle together against the vastness of what’s outside.
***
I slept in this morning, rolling out of Vale at about 10:30 after a lazy breakfast of oatmeal and eggs. To the east the land changed yet again, and so did the atmospheric conditions: there was a wind — a significant one of 15-20 mph, and it was on my side. All day it blew me onward, sometimes shifting to my flank for a while if the road wound around, but it was pretty much a perfect tailwind. It also gave me a new respect for the wind as a force. Had it instead been a headwind (from the southeast rather than northwest) it would have turned today into a hellish slog. But as it was, it made today’s 70 mile ride — dare I say it — easy?
Around noon, I crossed the Snake River in Nyssa, Oregon and entered a new state: Idaho! I’ll be in Idaho until a week from today, and on or near the Snake for much of that. I’ll be tracing (in reverse) the main route of the Oregon trail through places like Glenns Ferry, Twin Falls and American Falls. The early settlers were constantly vexed by this river, which plunges in and out of various gorges, over falls and fans out to define islands and various points. It’s a strange, wily kind of waterway — one of the most easterly to support a historical pacific salmon run. But for today, I got just a glimpse before returning to onion-dodging on the eastern bank.
The rest of the day was a bit blah. I crossed I84 (my first glimpse of an interstate since suburban Portland) and then slowly slid into the suburbs of Boise. Traffic! Strip malls! Stop lights! These sorts of annoyances hadn’t been part of my life for almost a week, and they seemed particularly jarring. The last 10 miles of today I spent on a lovely (if occasionally unpaved) trail which traced the Boise river right into downtown Boise. My rear tube had finally had enough, despite my bullet-proof rear tire, and I developed a slow leak that I had to top up a few times, but no matter — I was almost home, the path was lovely, and I could see hipsters (hipsters!) as I rolled into central Boise.
It’s been an amazing week — about 460 miles of astounding country. Tomorrow I rest.
